airps snippet: house hunting

Three more days in this testing cycle, if I don't count today, which I most certainly do not. Also, I really need to get off my Shiny Toy Guns kick at some point. Something about the screaming in Don't Cry Out manages to be both cathartic and yet highly unsettling.

Random snippet.

House Hunting
by seperis
Adam/Kris



The first group of houses are all the kind that show up on the cover of Architectural Digest with the tacit understanding you don't live in them so much as revel in the fact you can afford to own them. Or conversely, are of the type where someone thought gold-leaf was the ultimate in home decorating.

On one hand, they make Adam question the sanity of the realtor; on the other, the sheer horror forces Kris to actually express a vocal opinion, on the order of, "No way in hell, Lambert," at the terrifying mirrored bedroom, which proves that someone can take something as beautiful and wholesome as mild exhibitionism and make it so very, very wrong.

"We could take down the mirrors," Adam says as Kris concentrates on the road with the look of a man who barely escaped death, or staring at himself from five thousand separate angles. "Repaint--well, okay, everything."

Kris gives him a look just on this side of panic.

"Granted, the murals were a little--" Adam searches for the right word to express the feeling of being watched by flat, painted eyes that followed you from room to room. Sure, they could paint over that, but they'd always know beneath the paint, they were still there. "Okay, yeah, that was unsettling."

"Someone actually lived there."

"I'm trying not to think about that too much," Adam answers carefully. It's not that he has anything against murals or modern art, but there's expressing artistic vision and then there's whatever the fuck that was supposed to be. "Call me crazy, but was there a Dante's Inferno going on in the dining room or--"

"Oh, there was," Kris says, fingers white-knuckled around the wheel. "Imagine coming home to that after Burning Man this year and tell me we can repaint."

"I might find religion," Adam says, not sure he's joking. "Or a psychiatric disorder. Okay, so. First group: fail."

"Maybe talk to her about less avant-garde and more, I don't know, a place where the dogs won't be afraid to come inside?"

Adam looks at Kris thoughtfully. "You want a dog?" Kris had been involved with a fundraiser for some animal shelter a few months ago, and being Kris, now volunteered on alternate weekends and dragged Adam along whenever possible (read: a lot). Adam had been watching for escalation. "So we're at the dogs place now?"

Kris shrugs, shoulders set to defensive. "Maybe?"

"You're thinking of a specific dog, though," Adam continues cheerfully; he's been curious how Kris would approach the subject for a while now. "Specific dogs, plural."

"I was thinking of eventually getting a dog," Kris says, like this hasn't been obvious for fucking ever. "Maybe a cat," he adds in the spirit of compromise or something. "The lemon tree is still alive."

"Which we both admit may be the first verifiable miracle of the twenty-first century."

"Alive," Kris says firmly. "And I mean, after we get a house. The condo wouldn't really work--"

"That's why you agreed to start looking," Adam says, enlightened. "Fuck like, space and traffic and paparazzi living on our doorstep; you were thinking of the best place for us to raise puppies."

Kris doesn't deny it.

"I have never found you more adorable," Adam says, trying unsuccessfully to fight down the giggling that if he starts now will never ever stop, and Brad's couch is way too short to risk that. "Seriously. Puppies."

"It doesn't have to be puppies," Kris mutters half-heartedly, maybe thinking of the current crop at his pet animal shelter. "Forget it."

"I didn't say I was opposed to exploring your maternal instincts," Adam starts, enjoying this way too much.

Kris' left eyelid twitches.

"Just, do you think we're ready for such a big step?" Adam settles back on the seat, keeping his eyes carefully off the road. Kris is a very good driver, which is a problem, because that makes him very different from the population of LA, who most definitely are not. "If you're thinking couch, let me remind you that means no sex, and it's not like you're a ball of sunshine the next morning when that happens." Not that Adam is either, but Adam isn't interacting tomorrow with people he actually likes in a small, confined space where everyone is armed with objects that could double as weapons of blunt force trauma.

Kris meditates that. "True." Then. "It doesn’t have to be puppies."

"I don’t know." Adam considers the possibilities. "Will they have your eyes?"

Comments

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Have I mentioned the shrine? The one I'm building in your honor? The one that I will keep in the corner of my room next to my other essential things, i.e., my dog's bed, the phone, and the laptop?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*grins* Phone and laptop are like, necessary for life. I just realized that now that I have my mini, if I don't have it and my phone both, I feel underdressed or like I am wearing mismatched shoes.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

I know. And I used to hate phones. *glares at the internets* Totally all your fault. Stupid internets.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Seriously. Internet on my phone? Might as well glue it to my hand. I am not comfortable with it being out of range.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

They should just give us brain chips and be done with it. Be soooo much easier.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

*raises coffee cup* Soon, please.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Oh god. Do you think downloading data would be like a shot of caffeine? Because that would be awesome.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...now I do. Oh God, that would be amazing.

*stares at coffee in betrayal* My coffee is now unsatisfactory when it does not give me internet in the brain.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

I know...me too. I think I'm going to have to go read Sentient!Atlantis fics to comfort myself. ATA gene is as good as a brain chip right? According to the fandom ancient technology is about par with an orgasm...

And damn, did this get derailed or what?

[seperis.livejournal.com]

Thanks to the gene, all roads end up in SGA eventually. They gave us the gene of the ancients so you can talk to your hardware. I mean, that's geek porn, you know? Talk to your hardware with your mind. Just. Want.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Fuck, don't remind me. As cliche as it is, I have recurring self-insert fantasies of me in Atlantis. With John Sheppard. And the gene. In a threesome with the city. Who is an AI. A female one.

[seperis.livejournal.com]

I am going to lie and pretend such a thing never occurred to me. *stares into the distance*

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Aaaand I'm going to lie and say I never went past a threesome in these fantasies.
(In my defense, its the world's fault for making the actors who play Rodney, John, and Cam so hot. I mean, I can't be held responsible. Also, I'm going to skip over the Dream-That-Is-Not-Mentioned, but I will randomly point out that if clones were real I would totally spring for a Spock, Kirk, and McCoy. And, ok, I can't help it if my subconscious really really loves me. It was a dream. I can't control them!)

[seperis.livejournal.com]

...my coworkers want to know why I almost knocked over my coffee laughing. I blamed the fact Adam's For Your Entertainment came up on my playlist even though I'm not wearing my headphones.

*hiccuping into jacket weakly*

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

*giggles* Sorry. Also, I would like to point out that it is totally your fault that I read RPS. This, however, is not a bad thing. And wow, dogs should not be able to glare like that. I may have um. Woken up puppy. Laughing.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Kirk, Spock, and Bones in Atlantis. *thoughtful face, distant stare* You know, I don't think there's enough free-floating ego on the planet for both Jim and Rodney. That would go badly.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Um. You're also forgetting the out-whoring competition between Kirk and Sheppard, with Spock being quietly disproving in the background and Rodney throwing fits and Kirk and John accidentally ending up in a threesome with Bones while trying to one up each other. This could happen, someone totally needs to write this.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Spock and Rodney flatly and categorically deny that they're having any kind of competition, but the fact that every other scientist in the city has found an excuse to be working somewhere other than the labs seems to imply otherwise. After about a week, there's a spectacular, explosive yelling match; afterwards, they seem to have joined forces. This scares the rest of the science team far more than the cold war did.

It would be a beautiful, beautiful trainwreck.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Oh my god. You're a genius. Then they could, like, team up and save Sheppard and Kirk from their man-whore ways.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

I'm writing this. Considering my WoW time is about to run out, I will be writing manically for the next few days. Can I like, convince someone to beta for me or something. Or at least tell me if I horribly screw it up and should never post it.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

Intelligence vs. galactic girly-mags? No contest, man. No contest.

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Actually, in my mind, they pretty much just pinned them down and told them that their man-whoring days are over and they were taken now, and if they wanted sex to come to their resident genius.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

I like that scenario a great deal!

[averzierlia.livejournal.com]

Also, I'm convinced that the reason all the stuff that happens to Sheppard and Kirk happens because the universe is actually in love with them, and the laws of probability are attempting to compensate.

[ellixis.livejournal.com]

... why does that make so much sense, holy crap! Genius.